Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst’s recent call for an additional $60 million in annual state funding for “a continuous surge operation” in the border region dramatically raised the ante in the high-stakes discussion of immigration and border security in the 2014 Republican primary campaign. Republican candidates at the state and national level remain sharply conflicted over how to talk about immigration reform in ways that resonate with the restrictive attitudes prevalent among GOP primary voters without antagonizing current and future Latino voters.

Results from the University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll suggests that invoking border security might offer a safe ...

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". . . The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and cliches and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders." (Edward Bernays)

Removing more freedom is not the answer. Freedom of travel, freedom of trade, freedom to hire. Freedom does not exist behind walls. The GOP has abandoned free markets in their rush to blame 'outsiders' and the Democrats are just looking for the next group of people to use politically.

Paranoia felt from "invaders" is not going to be reduced by walls higher, longer, thicker, armed, droned, or rabid guard dogs from hell patrolling our borders. Paranoia is fed from fear. Fear of strangers is a useful tool for political manipulators to provide a reason for political upheaval. Worked for Joseph Goebbels and, as we are seeing, others.

For the anti-immigration crowd, it pretty much is a dog whistle. Ironically, though state-level border security has nothing to do with immigration enforcement. FTM, most illegal traffic - and smuggling, for that matter - happens at the checkpoints, not the areas in between them where DPS is patrolling.

For Latinos, it's a function of fearing the terrible cartel violence in Mexico and the medias failure to debunk hyped claims by politicians and their enablers about "spillover violence." Even the smallest incident here is hyped while mass atrocities on the other side of the river are barely covered, or mentioned once then never explored. The real spillover is not south to north but north to south - in particular our prison gangs crossing the river to participate as "soldiers" on behalf of cartels, especially in Juarez. But DPS' amped up presence has nothing to do with that.

The Texas border is the safest place in the state. If the issue were public safety, they'd be "surging" in Dallas or Houston.

The University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll is conducted by YouGov, which employs a controversial methodology. The survey, conducted over the Internet, relies on “a proprietary opt-in survey panel” that is not selected randomly.

Widely respected Langer Research Associates issued a “briefing paper” on opt-in online surveys in August of last year noting that the American Association for Public Opinion Research has been quite critical of such surveys — even arguing that reporting a margin of error for an opt-in sample is “misleading”— and that a number of major media organizations “have adopted policies ruling out the reporting of opt-in online surveys as news, given the unreliability of the method.”